VELODYNE IN GERMANY

After 36 years of US ownership, the founder and owner of Velodyne, David Hall, sold his company to Mansour Mamaghani, the owner of Germany’s Audio Reference, in a deal that was inked on November 22nd, 2019. Hall was keen to sell the company so he could concentrate on his new company, Velodyne Lidar, which makes lidars for autonomous vehicles, which he saw as the future (See break-out box Velodyne Lidar for more details). For his part, Mamaghani was keen to purchase Velodyne because his company had been the German distributor for more than two decades and he was a huge fan of the brand. The deal included all Velodyne’s stock, spare parts, patents, designs and tooling.

“We are very excited with the opportunity presented by the Velodyne purchase,” said Mamaghani at the time. “Our goal is to reinstate Velodyne as the market leader for compact high-powered subwoofers. We understand this will take some time, but we have already brought the Velodyne design team back together to review the existing product line and also our expectations for the future.”

Velodyne’s global operation is now based in Hamburg, in Germany, with the subwoofers being manufactured in China. #